Climate change: The Pacific

Climate change and rising sea levels. There are moves to relocate many people of the Carteret islands to other parts of PNG. But what about Kiribati?

One day the entire country could disappear under the waves. Where will the people of Kiribati go? And without territory or a resident population, can a country simply cease to exist at international law?

Transcript

Damien Carrick: Hello, welcome to the Law Report, I'm Damien Carrick. Today climate change. Australia will certainly have to deal with challenges as the temperature rises, but they're going to pale into insignificance compared to the enormous problems facing countries like Kiribati and Bangladesh. If sea levels rise by only one metre, 30 million Bangladeshis will have to be relocated. And Kiribati, its plan for the future? Well, they've thrown in the towel. The central plank of official government policy is migration with dignity, that's it. Over the next two weeks we're going to be looking at some of the legal and policy implications of migration pressures created by climate change. This week we'll concentrate on the Pacific. Next week the Indian Ocean. Dr Maryanne Loughry is from the Jesuit Refugee Service. She was a speaker at a recent conference hosted by the University of New South Wales, looking at climate change and migration. Dr Loughry has spent a lot of time in the Carteret Islands, in Papua New Guinea. Its inhabitants are often referred to as the world's first climate change refugees.

Maryanne Loughry: The Carteret Islands are about three hours by banana boat from Bougainville, so part of Papua New Guinea, but then the autonomous region of Bougainville and then further out from there.

Damien Carrick: What's the population?

Maryanne Loughry: It's estimated that there's about 2500 Carteret islanders, but they're not all on the islands at one time, so it appears to be about, a number of about 1500 that are there at any one time.

Maryanne Loughry: They've been termed that because they are now in need of having to move. What's very clear is that there's too many people living on the atolls and there's not enough land to keep them. And for some time now the government's actually been, every three months, supplying additional food to the islanders just to keep them with reasonable nutrition.

Damien Carrick: Describe what you see when you go there in terms of the condition of the islands.

Maryanne Loughry: When you first arrive, after the three and a half hours, it's beautiful. I mean, you see this very lovely waters, you see white sand, you see coconut trees and you think, 'My goodness, this is it, this is paradise.' But the longer you kind of walk around the islands, and the longer you talk to the people, you realise that there's pollution, that there's also food shortages, there's salt water inundation...

Damien Carrick: Water inundation, so a reduction in arable land as a result of the water becoming salty.

Maryanne Loughry: That's right. What happens, especially if there's a king tide, is that the sea water will come in, but it won't recede. It will stay on the land and the land will become salty then and then nothing will grow, so that people's plots of land have shrunk over time, because land has become less arable as you say, and people have been unable to grow enough to keep themselves. While they can fish, and there still is plenty of fish around, there's not a lot of other crops, and so they supplement it with food that comes in from the mainland.

Damien Carrick: Are the actual islands sinking into the sea? Are you seeing loss of land at the coastline?

Maryanne Loughry: Yes, I was given a tour of one of the main islands by three young boys, and it was very interesting because as we walked around, and it took some time to walk around, they would point out to me where sea walls had been and now were out in the water. They would also show me coconut trees that used to be upright that were now fallen over, they would show me where they had had land before, where they used to put their boat... So you could certainly see on the atoll that there was a change of the land formation. They actually know which trees is their family's, so they could point out, 'This tree here used to do this and it doesn't do it anymore, it used to fruit and now it doesn't...' So they're very aware of what's changing on their own plots and on the plots of their neighbours.

Damien Carrick: So you've got, as I understand it, rising population, a decline in the amount of arable land. I understand that there have been a number of moves, both past and present, to relocate the people of the Carteret Islands. Can you tell me briefly about a move I think was back in the 1980s. What happened back then?

Maryanne Loughry: It was certainly being recognised for some time that the islands weren't sustainable with the population that they have, and this has been reported in the '50s, in the '60s, but certainly in 1980s there was a movement of people. There was land identified and people did move. I think it's over 80 people moved in the initial tranche of people and then there was also going to be people from other atolls but where they moved to was 30 kilometres inland.

Damien Carrick: So, on the main island of Bougainville?

Maryanne Loughry: Yes, they moved to the main island of Bougainville, near Arawa which is the kind of capital of Bougainville. Thirty kilometres in because the land near the water was too swampy, and then people had to garden, and they didn't have access to water and they didn't have access to fishing rights. But they made a good try of it, but what appears to have happened is that there wasn't continual support as they tried to make a new livelihood, and also the conflict that occurred at Bougainville at that time in relation to the mine and landowners, overtook events. And people actually went back to the Carterets, because they were fearful of the conflict at the time.

Damien Carrick: So that attempt at relocation was unsuccessful. But now, as the waters rise, there are now attempts happening again to relocate the people. What moves are afoot now?

Maryanne Loughry: There's two movements afoot, and I'm afraid both are in a bit of tension with each other. There's a very significant Carteret Island NGO called Tulele Peisa, run by a very well-known woman Ursula, and she has, out of frustration for events not having kind of taken place fast enough, she's actually found some property that's church property and has sourced funding and has actually relocated five families. And those families are now making a go of being relocated, but Ursula has the problem of funds, and also the resources needed as family sizes increase around clinics and schools and roads, is something that she won't be able to sustain. In the meantime the government itself is actually making its own initiative and they hope in the first instance to move 60 families, and they are going through a whole process... they've identified the land, and they're trying now to draw up and finalise an MOU between the people who are the host community, who live around that land, so that the people from the Carterets can move there. But that's taken a long time to get the MOU finalised.

Damien Carrick: So you've got on the one hand, a private initiative by local people to kind of take control of their own destiny and move themselves, off the Carteret Islands onto the main Bougainville island. On the other hand you've got this perhaps slower, more cumbersome government process which is trying to make sure that they've dotting their i's and crossing their t's, but it's a slower more cumbersome process.

Maryanne Loughry: It is. Both are attentive to the host community, and the one that Tulele Peisa has, has been very much supported by local people who have helped even build the houses for the people who are arriving. But the one as you say, it's a much bigger plan, the one in Corula that the government's planning, and they're being much more concerned about the host community and what their concerns will be and whether this can be a permanent movement, because they don't want it to be something that after a couple of years fails, and people return, so they're really trying to do very good planning, but that's taking its time.

Damien Carrick: Maryanne Loughry, what we sometimes forget is we're often concerned about the people who are leaving marginal or degraded land or islands, but of course there needs to be concern about the rights of the people who live in the area which are receiving these people as well. So it seems to me very interesting that there is this attempt to engage in dialogue with the host community. Tell me about that.

Maryanne Loughry: One of the advantages if I can tell you about Corula where the government's hoping to relocate people is that it's the same clans as the people who are on the Carterets. So there's a sense that these people will welcome their own people who left some centuries ago. But there's also a great awareness that there's very limited resources on Bougainville, and that new arrivals will actually tax the existing systems which are fairly limited. So the government's being very mindful of getting the agreement of the host communities and doing some planning so that the host communities will benefit from this relocation and the movement of people rather than being taxed by it.

Damien Carrick: I understand that you've also visited Kiribati and Tuvalu. How would you compare and contrast both the challenges and the responses to those challenges between those two countries and the Carteret Islands which form part of the Bougainville autonomous region of Papua New Guinea?

Maryanne Loughry: Well, one thing that's very obvious is the people from the Carterets are moving to the mainland, but they're still in the same country. So there isn't issues around citizenship, around rights and entitlements. It's their own government and their own people looking after themselves. Whereas the tensions that the people of Tuvalu and Kiribati are facing is having to move elsewhere.

Damien Carrick: Dr Maryanne Loughry from the Jesuit Refugee Service and also based at Boston College in the USA. I'm Damien Carrick and you're listening to the Law Report, broadcast each week on Radio National, Radio Australia and ABC News Radio.

The situation in Kiribati and Tuvalu is indeed precarious. In the not too distant future, most of the inhabitants will most likely have to migrate to another country. It's even possible that both nation-states could sink entirely under the waves and even cease to exist at international law. Tessie Lambourne is the secretary of the Kiribati Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Kiribati is a country of only 100,000 people who occupy a tiny land mass. But this sprinkling of tiny far-flung atolls means the country has a giant exclusive economic zone over about 3.5 million square kilometres of the Pacific Ocean.

Tessie Lambourne: It is. It is actually 32 atolls and one island.

Damien Carrick: And describe, an atoll is a very kind of thin ring of land, isn't it?

Tessie Lambourne: That's right. Very narrow strip of land with a lagoon in the middle and an ocean on the other side. It's very flat, rising no more than two metres above sea level, average elevation. I guess the highest point would be the tallest coconut tree.

Damien Carrick: Right. So not high at all. And tell me, are you seeing the effects of climate change already?

Tessie Lambourne: Yes, definitely. Our people are suffering already. In fact, we have a whole village on one of the outer islands relocated because their village was eroded away. And there are also some situations where people have lost graves of their family. Now, for us this is a very emotional experience because of the link we do have with our people. This is just one. The other impacts that our people are feeling at the moment is loss of food crops.

Damien Carrick: So there's a loss of arable land and a loss of fresh water resources.

Tessie Lambourne: Yes, that too. Because the fresh water resource comes from underground aquifers, floating on top of the salt water, any rise in sea level will have the sea water intruding into the fresh water then, so making it saline and undrinkable.

Damien Carrick: And this is happening on a regular basis, these storm surges?

Tessie Lambourne: Yes, yes, they are. And every time that happens the people cry to the government for help. Every time. It's quite sad to witness and to suffer from that, because every time we get the storm surge you see people literally running after their possessions, their pots because the waves are washing their pots away... Their pigs... [? inaudible].

Damien Carrick: So, Tessie Lambourne, realistically, what are the prospects for Kiribati long-term?

Tessie Lambourne: That is a very difficult question to answer, because in the long-term what will still be here? Would we still exist? The long term our fate lies in the hands of emitters of greenhouse gases. It's...

Damien Carrick: But what's the science telling you?

Tessie Lambourne: What it is saying to us is that it's too late for us. That we are already on the frontline, we are falling off the cliff. That's what science is telling us with the projections. That within this century we may have to leave our islands, because they will become uninhabitable.

Damien Carrick: And in the longer term it is also possible that they could literally go underwater as well.

Tessie Lambourne: Yes, well, that is the ultimate impact. That they will go underwater. But before that we will leave the islands because they won't be able to support life anymore.

Damien Carrick: I mean, I understand that the definition of a country or a state you have to have a population and you have to have a territory, you could lose your population, you could also lose your territory as well. What would happen? Does that mean that Kiribati ceases to exist?

Tessie Lambourne: That is a question that we constantly ask and it's in the back of our mind. There's some commentators who say that yes, we can. If we maintain our islands, get some people to live there and be able to issue passports, we'll still be able to remain a state. Personally I don't know if that's going to be possible or even practical. If the islands are no longer able to sustain life, how are we going to maintain the population there? Well, we can with artificial means, get desalination plants to supply water, it's going to be difficult but it's possible.

Damien Carrick: Kiribati is tiny land-wise, but it controls or has control of resources across a vast swathe of the open sea. How big is the area over which you have some access to the resources of fishery, for instance? Fisheries for instance?

Tessie Lambourne: We have an exclusive economic zone of 3.5 million square kilometres. That is vast. At the moment we do not harvest those resources. We sell the rights to distant water fishing nations to fish in our waters, but it's very difficult to look after that resource. Because we only have one patrol boat. This patrol boat was a gift from the government of Australia. And imagine, one patrol boat to look after 3.5 million square kilometres of water.

Damien Carrick: It's not going to do the job really, is it? But I understand that it counts for something like 40 per cent of government revenue, the royalties from people coming in and using your fishery resources, is that right?

Tessie Lambourne: That is right.

Damien Carrick: Tell me, what is Kiribati looking at doing? I mean, there are some quite science fiction possible responses to climate change. What are you considering in order to kind of keep your legal status as a nation?

Tessie Lambourne: At the moment our government is considering all options available to us. There was a proposal from the university in Japan that they will be able to provide us with a floating island that can accommodate 10,000 people, even 100.000 people. They can do that. So, everything will be provided. Water, everything. And we thought, 'Well, that is an option for our people, and we may be able to use that to maintain our territory.'

Damien Carrick: Well, I understand that your president did ask a very eminent law of the sea expert and she says, 'No, floating islands won't work, but if you can build lighthouses on existing but shrinking land areas, or if you can maintain some of your land mass, then you can hopefully maintain a tiny amount of territory and your right to those maritime resources.'

Tessie Lambourne: That is correct, yes, we have received that advice, that artificial islands cannot claim EEZ's.

Damien Carrick: EEZ's, what are they?

Tessie Lambourne: Exclusive economic zones. So, we can't use that for that purpose. But as we also were advised, we can build up or protect existing baselines from which we claim jurisdiction over that zone. And that's okay, even if our islands are shrinking to just rock. But I think the important thing is as long as we maintain our baseline, we'll be able to claim our exclusive economic zone.

Damien Carrick: So hopefully you'll be able to do that. Okay, that's loss of territory. We're also looking at loss of population. I understand that the government of Kiribati is now, has an official policy of migration with dignity. You're basically looking down the barrel into the future and you're thinking, 'These islands cannot support the current population, nothing like it.' What are you hoping to do? It's an interesting strategy to kind of educate the workforce, so it can fill labour market niches in countries like Australia and New Zealand.

Tessie Lambourne: That is true. Our government has been waiting for answers from the international community. Because we expect those responsible for causing climate change to take the responsibility and solve the problem for those of us who are victims of climate change. But we have waited far too long, and nothing has been forthcoming. So our government says, 'Okay, let's do something for ourselves.' And so, with relocation, traditionally when people talk about relocation they just see this mass number of people moving from one place to another. Well, that was actually what we were advocating for earlier. But nobody was responding. So our government came up with a rational approach, and this is the merits based relocation program. We can also call it migration with dignity program. And what it involves is we are upscaling our people to those international labour standards, so when there are job openings in other countries in the world, especially in Australia and New Zealand, we'll be able, they'll be able to compete for those.

Damien Carrick: You're doing two particular areas, I mean, I know that there's a longstanding program to train people as seafarers to work in the merchant kind of navies of the world. Also nurses as well, which actually fills a niche, especially in Australia and New Zealand.

Tessie Lambourne: Actually, yes. That is correct.

Damien Carrick: Part of that strategy is to create communities in places like Australia and New Zealand, so when the waves do rise, or the land becomes unviable, then the rest of the population will be able to integrate more easily because those beachheads, those existing communities will already be in place.

Tessie Lambourne: That is the plan.

Damien Carrick: A plan for the future, migration with dignity. Tessie Lambourne, the secretary of the Kiribati Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

But will the plan work? It's based on the assumption that the two regional wealthy heavyweights, that's Australia and New Zealand, that they come to the party. Professor Richard Bedford is based at the Population Study Centre at the University of Waikato in New Zealand.

Richard Bedford: If the Kiribati people, the Kiribati and Tuvaluans, in the long run, want to leave their atolls, and I think they should be able to stay as long as they wish, but if in the end they choose to leave there's absolutely no way Australia and New Zealand would have great difficulty in accommodating the numbers that are involved. Population of Kiribati is around 103,000 a bit less than an annual intake into Australia of migrants under your immigration program. And Tuvalu has around 11.000, which is about one fifth of New Zealand's annual migration intake.

Damien Carrick: Okay, waters rise around the world and Kiribati and Tuvalu are affected, 100,000 people, 10,000 people. That's also going to affect Bangladesh population, 100 and something million people, do we owe a special obligation to the people of the South Pacific over and above to what we owe the people of Bangladesh or other very populated countries?

Richard Bedford: Well, I'm a geographer, and I actually think proximity and neighbourhood does bring with it some additional obligations, perhaps, over and above the obligations that might exist in a total global context. We also have some other obligations linked with that proximity. We've used these island countries in all kinds of ways in the past, they have been used as our kind of security shield, we have been the colonial rulers in a number of these countries, we have used their labour at different times when it has suited us, and in the case of Kiribati and well what was the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony, we've certainly used the phosphate and drawn on whatever resources that they had, while European powers were in control of the administration of these places.

Damien Carrick: And you're saying Australia and New Zealand are part of that European influence.

Richard Bedford: Yes, Australia and New Zealand are key partners in what was the British Phosphate Commission that exploited the phosphate of Nauru and the phosphate of Banaba or Ocean Island.

Damien Carrick: Banaba's in Kiribati?

Richard Bedford: Banaba is their language name for Ocean Island, which is what... it's known more commonly in Australia and New Zealand as Ocean Island, but it's called Banaba by the people up there.

Damien Carrick: So you would argue that we should allow mobility in and out of Australia and New Zealand, and that would actually let people make their own choices and whatever skills they acquire they can kind of take back to and from Kiribati and Tuvalu, and in that way extend the life of those countries as long as they are viable.

Richard Bedford: Yeah, give them the same choices that we in New Zealand and you in Australia give ourselves. The 22 million Australians, if they wanted to tomorrow, could move across the Tasman to New Zealand under the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement. There's nothing to stop any Australian, as long as he's a citizen of Australia or she, in coming to New Zealand. In fact, there's nothing to stop a permanent resident in Australia from coming across either, anymore than there's anything at the moment, under the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement, to stop New Zealanders from coming. The only difference between the two flows is that New Zealanders don't qualify for certain employment related benefits.

Damien Carrick: And the flow does seem to go in one, more strongly in one direction than in the other.

Richard Bedford: Comes from the small countries to the big countries, and that's what tends to happen in most parts of the world.

Damien Carrick: So you're saying that, 'Okay, we already have a notion of community, in this part of the world, but we should actually expand it...'

Richard Bedford: I'm not arguing that we have the Trans-Pacific Mobility Travel Arrangement which allows everybody to come and go exactly as they please. What I do think we have to be more receptive to, though, is the needs of people in our region. Now, Australia has made a significant move in this direction with the Pacific Seasonal Workers pilot, which I hope is going to be converted into an ongoing scheme. It's working for Australia, I've heard the employers saying how much they value very small numbers of Pacific people, six or twelve, on an orchard. That's hardly going to destabilise Australia's labour market.

New Zealand is bringing a lot of people in from the Pacific on a similar seasonal scheme. The unions have accepted this, they've recognised that New Zealanders aren't going to do that work. There's no way they're going to go and do that work. Pacific islanders are doing the work, they're earning reasonable money, certainly good money by their standards, it's minimum wage or above in New Zealand, so it's not illegal kind of wage stuff, and it has the potential long-term to contribute a lot back to the islands as well as helping us with our labour needs. Now, that over time, if it works well, must be a win-win. That's not a loss for Australia. It's not a loss for New Zealand. That's actually helping us.

Damien Carrick: One final question, I understand that the one country which has said that it will do something for Kiribati and Tuvalu if climate change does make them unviable, is Fiji. Tell me, what has Fiji done?

Richard Bedford: Well, at the Copenhagen conference, the climate change conference, I think the minister of foreign affairs, the acting minister of foreign affairs, was probably the only senior government official who, in our part of the world, who explicitly said in his statement to that conference, something, I can't quote it, but to the effect that Kiribati and Tuvalu and Fiji have had long connections and relationships. The important point is, Fiji made the point at that conference that we have friends in our neighbours. We have people... We are concerned as well for our neighbourhood. We are not just thinking about ourselves. Unfortunately... I mean, New Zealand and Australia are concerned for their neighbourhood, and they do an awful lot in their neighbourhood, but neither country has been prepared to say, 'In the long run, we will be prepared to resettle if you choose to come. We will be countries where you can come.' I think the reality will be that will happen, but we haven't yet had governments who've been prepared to say, 'We would do that.'

Damien Carrick: Professor Richard Bedford, based at the Population Studies Centre at the University of Waikato in New Zealand.

Next week on the Law Report climate change in the Indian Ocean and moves to think about the impact of climate change in human rights terms. Our website is at abc.net.au/rn/lawreport. There you can download audio, listen to the program online, read a transcript or leave a comment. I'm Damien Carrick, thanks to producer Verica Jokic and to technical producer Melissa May. Talk to you next week with more law.

Tamiano :

22 Nov 2011 10:23:14am

What a ridiculous comment; have you visited an atoll before? Making drinking water via desalination requires massive amounts of electricity, which requires huge amounts of fuel to be shipped onto the islands and a very large expense. These I-Kiribati people are very resilient, living in a harsh environment, but once their water supply disappears they and their vegetation will not survive. Their atolls will be turned into a desert! The real issue is the preservation of language and culture that comes with their survival, and the Kiribati culture is unique and found nowhere else on earth. These people are a product of their environment and way of life. Take them away from their homelands and much will be lost. Any outcome as a result of global warming will not be positive for these islanders.

daviddon :

22 Nov 2011 10:45:41am

Enjoyed this well constructed and well backgrounded program on subjects Australians do need to think about.

The speaker about what the colonists called Ocean Island was careful twice to point to the name used by its inhabitants, Banaba. On the other hand, Damien was using the establishment pronunciation, Pappyoouh, for the country whose inhabitants universally say Pahpwa.

Stephen Coates :

22 Nov 2011 4:19:53pm

Not wanting to downplay the real impact of climate change, Kiribati is located on an atoll that is sinking, like Venice, but for different reasons. To answer the question of where will the people go, the obvious places are the other Pacific Islands where the customs and language of the residents and climate are similar to Kiribati. However, if they must go elsewhere, as Australia is responsible for about 1.4% of greenhouse gasses, Australia must be willing to accept 1.4% of the Kiribati people.

Laura :

23 Nov 2011 2:01:45pm

I think the obvious answer for 'where will people go?' is to respect the wishes of the people directly affected. A lot of assumptions are made by commentators when addressing this question, and too often people fail to acknowledge the desires, interests and right to autonomy of those bearing the brunt of the impact.

Should people wish to shift, and should any people wish to shift to Australia (and I'm not assuming they do); then Australia holds a responsibility above and beyond accepting 1.4% of the population. The damage we do extends beyond any emissions calculation alone. Successive Aust governments have demonstrated a flagrant disregard for people's welfare in the Pacific on this issue (through refusing the requests of a previous Tuvaluan government for land allocation, through refusing to so much as draft explicit assistance policies within the Dept of Immigration for those displaced by climate change, through dragging the chain on curbing emissions etc). It's insulting & embarrassing.

Stephen Coates :

24 Nov 2011 11:04:17pm

Australia has "refused the requests of a previous Tuvaluan government for land allocation"? Does Australia own land on Tuvalu that it won't let that government allocate? Or is Tuvalu trying to claim a piece of Australia? Tuvalu isn't Kiribati and whatever dispute exists between Tuvalu and Australia over land somewhere does not create an obligation on Australia to take a disproportionate share of refugees that are likely when Kiribati becomes uninhabitable.

Peter Ravine :

23 Nov 2011 11:00:38am

Tessie and Oceania governments should Google “freshwater lenses” to see how rising sea levels reduce freshwater lens depths under islands. A one meter ground level rise could increase freshwater lens depths by forty meters. Oceania inhabitants have a claim on world inhabitants to finance land reclamation schemes to restore freshwater lens depths by raising ground levels, where appropriate, either by suction dredging from the sea or by importing soil from other areas. Extra increased depth should be allowed for rainfall variation.Wave erosion protection will be needed.

William :

Let's talk about Kiribati's number one issue - unsustainable population growth.

The population grew from 52,000 in 1973 to 110,000 today - an annual average growth rate of 1.8% which doubles population every 40 years or so.

The effects of population pressures and associated polution of groundwater, as well as salt water intrusion, are putting water supplies at risk.

With Australia's leadership (by example) and support, Kiribati should urgently put in place their own sustainable population strategy. This is where our aid should be focused, as per the policy of the STABLE POPULATION PARTY.

Wendy Flannery :

23 Nov 2011 4:51:47pm

As well as mispronouncing Papua, Damien unfortunately, like most ABC and even SBS commentators, prounced Tuvalu as TOOvLOO. When the people chose it for their name at independence, they chose it for its meaning ("eight standing together"). It should be pronounced exactly like "banana" or "tomato". Just listen carefully to the professor from New Zealand.

Bjorn Stig Hansen :

don findlay :

24 Nov 2011 4:16:23pm

..And I wrote a note on it here, http://earthexpansion.blogspot.com/2011/11/sea-level-rise-and-climate-change.htmlfor anyone interested enough to read it (rather than clutter up this space). Modelling is all very well, but when it flies in the face of the facts, then we have to wonder what's driving it. It doesn't take very uch scouting on the web to see that the issue is rather political. Kiribati, the Seychelles, Bangladesh, and others pointing the finger at western "emitters" as the source of their troubles, is the other side of the self-interest coin that scientists perhaps have to wear for their own excursion into fear-mongering for the sake of career advancement (= funding). We wonder how they would behave if they were made personally liable for the claims that the affected communites would see themselves entitled to. (Law report? - go for it.)

Stephen Williams :

25 Nov 2011 5:11:02pm

can anyone show me where sea levels are recorded as increasing at such a rate as to make these islands uninhabitable? I think you will find that what land loss has occurred in these places is due to other phenomena, not sea level increase. That aside I'm more than happy for them to move here, however I would demand that they sign over all title to any land holdings they have in whatever place they leave to the Australian Government. I would then auction off those titles to the highest Australian bidder.

Jennifer Doherty :

07 Jan 2012 11:57:42pm

While the Earth has always endured natural climate change variability, we are now facing the possibility of irreversible climate change in the near future. The increase of greenhouse gases in the Earth?s atmosphere from industrial processes has enhanced the natural greenhouse effect. This in turn has accentuated the greenhouse ?trap? effect, causing greenhouse gases to form a blanket around the Earth, inhibiting the sun?s heat from leaving the outer atmosphere. This increase of greenhouse gases is causing an additional warming of the Earth?s surface and atmosphere. A direct consequence of this is sea-level rise expansion, which is primarily due to the thermal expansion of oceans (water expands when heated), inducing the melting of ice sheets as global surface temperature increases.Forecasts for climate change by the 2,000 scientists on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) project a rise in the global average surface temperature by 1.4 to 5.8°C from 1990 to 2100. This will result in a global mean sea level rise by an average of 5 mm per year over the next 100 years. Consequently, human-induced climate change will have ?deleterious effects? on ecosystems, socio-economic systems and human welfare.At the moment, especially high risks associated with the rise of the oceans are having a particular impact on the two archipelagic states of Western Polynesia: Tuvalu and Kiribati. According to UN forecasts, they may be completely inundated by the rising waters of the Pacific by 2050.According to the vast majority of scientific investigations, warming waters and the melting of polar and high-elevation ice worldwide will steadily raise sea levels. This will likely drive people off islands first by spoiling the fresh groundwater, which will kill most land plants and leave no potable water for humans and their livestock. Low-lying island states like Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and the Maldives are the most prominent nations threatened in this way.“The biggest challenge is to preserve their nationality without a territory,” said Bogumil Terminski from Geneva. The best solution is continue to recognize deterritorialized states as a normal states in public international law. The case of Kiribati and other small island states is a particularly clear call to action for more secure countries to respond to the situations facing these ‘most vulnerable nations’, as climate change increasingly impacts upon their lives.